No 1 (2022)

The article explores the ideal, reference image of the city. The aim of the article is to analyze the correlation of the ideal image of the city with its similarities, reflections of the prototype. To illustrate the functioning of the image of the city as an ideal object, the image of Amber from Roger Zelazny’s work The Chronicles of Amber is used. The objectives of the article are: (1) to carry out a theoretical description of the metaphysical construction of Platonism and Neoplatonism reproduced in Zelazny’s work; (2) to show, with the help of the methodological approach of Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology, that the hero’s desire to return to their city can be interpreted as a movement along the path of individuation, in which the archetype of the self is actualized, and a person’s desire to achieve the fullness of being is realized; (3) to trace the use of the metaphor of reflection in the urban discourse of world culture, expressed, in particular, in the “reflection of names”, to reveal the mechanism of changing the hierarchical position of the prototype and reflection; (4) to demonstrate the multidimensional and paradoxical nature of urban reflections on the material of the St. Petersburg text of Russian culture; (5) to trace the genetic link between urban planning and handicraft activities of the pre-industrial era. The result of the study is a description of the material, procedural, subjective, and social forms of reproduction of the sample, in which the ascent from the craft sample to the image of the city is made. One of the versions of the beginning of city design is proposed. The conclusion is made about the similarity between urban planning design and handicraft activity, the creation of metaphysical systems, and the construction of scientific theories.

The article contains a theoretical and methodological proposal on how to research and understand the visual aspects of urban space. First of all, the authors present the concept of linking signs and values. This idea was created and developed in the 1970s and 1980s on the ground of Polish cultural studies. Researchers propose to use it to describe the graphic phenomena on city walls. What is commonly considered to be manifestations of vandalism or irrelevant images, inscriptions, and scribbles are, in fact, strategies for the transmission of values that are important for social communities (norms, beliefs, ideas, worldviews etc.). The further part of the text presents a few examples from field studies conducted in several housing estates in Wrocław (Poland). The research was qualitative, and the material was recorded with photo and video cameras. The material was collected in the years 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which influenced its content.

The article is dedicated to the possibilities of studying the axiological attitude towards the urban environment on the basis of user-generated content in social networks. The visual image of the city in the context of digital footprints is considered to be a cognitive model of the urban environment, which reflects interpretative and projective constructions – subjective ideas about the environment loci that become adopted “places” and express certain axiological attitudes and expectations of individuals. The article shows that the content of social networks implements, first of all, a communicative function – between users, and between them and the city itself. Interpersonal communication and communication with the city are conditions for constructing personal identity and for the city existence and change. The city exists, in particular, as an urban identity, in forms of adopted places of urban space. The described tendency of the urban environment appropriation is quite clearly expressed in the visual materials of urban communities, which appear as a new and significant phenomenon. The analysis of user-generated content in social networks shows that photographs poorly represent the city dwellers’ vital values of everyday life, but they express their existential needs. The dominant value-semantic meaning of the urban environment is its ability to be developed and appropriated by a person

The article is dedicated to the semiotic analysis of the exterior space using the example of the contemporary sculpture park in the courtyard of the Faculty of Philology, Saint Petersburg State University. The relevance of this discourse is in the fact that a cultural-semiotic description of the university space can become an impetus for such local studies of the first level. In addition, due to the analyzed empirical material, cultural and semiotic constants of the university space, as well as the structure of social and cultural memory, are derived (second level). The article was written using a semiotic method. The semantic and pragmatic aspects of the sculptures are analyzed as not only a holistic text, but also emerging syntagmatic chains. A special place is also given to the pragmatic (superstitious) sculptures of the university space, to which students attribute miraculous qualities. The empirical material is also described in a typological way. The sculptures are clustered according to different parameters and themes: sculptures of cultural representatives, literary heroes of the park, transnational sculptures of the park, scientists and philosophers of the park, pragmatic sculptures of the park, sculptures of the park as indicators of faculties and offices, religious sculptures of the park, comprehension of time and history in the park, historical sculptures of the park, pragmatism of the park. The typologization of the empirical material shows the structural and thematic outlines of the exterior of the space and identifies important markers of social memory and the importance of its animation and transmission to the next generation. In addition, it is proposed that Russian researchers would conduct studies of the third level – this is the level of the description and analysis of the typology of the university space not only of Russian universities, but also of universities in the countries of the Soviet and post-Soviet space. The analysis of the empirical material shows that the university park is semantically and pragmatically loaded. Each sculpture becomes an object of decoding and comprehension by recipients. Moreover, each new generation of students gets acquainted with the social, cultural and historical memory; forms their own traditions, such as “superstitious” monuments bringing luck. The university park, in fact, becomes a space for relaxation, romantic and intellectual exploration. Thanks to the inspiring authors (Bogdanov, Avetisyan), the university park has become an “interior” space in the open air, a materialized example of the concept of “education-upbringing”, since there are many sculptures dedicated to famous figures of culture, literature, as well as literary heroes, key historical events. In addition, cultural artifacts endow the university space with a new function – an open-air museum, which includes not only different cultural and religious layers, but also historical events such as the Great Patriotic War and the tragic events of the Soviet era (repressions). All the encoded cultural, historical and religious values, in fact, become important soft power constants for modeling the national, cultural and political identity, which in emergency (military) situations manifests itself as a sense of patriotism.

The essay reports how the solution to the problem of the traditionality and exclusivity of the image and symbol structure of the Orthodox church architecture is shown using the example of a church in the name of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of the Holy Trinity Monastery of Irkutsk Eparchy, built in Kirensk in the 18th century. Jérôme Baschet’s methodological technique of searching for the traditional and the exceptional, which he applied to the analysis of medieval art, was used. For the first time, a relational approach is proposed in the study of architecture, implying the identification of the typological class of a building, the search for analogs or sources of the image of its structure. Attention is focused on issues of localization, prevalence, concretization of the embodiment of the building’s features. It has been established that the church can be characterized as a wooden tiered three-part gate monastery church, but there is no direct analogue of the church. The architecture of the Kirensk church has some features inherent in wooden three-part, three-part tiered, and gate monastery churches; it has an original volumetric planning solution. The semantics of the church is associated with its belonging to gate monastery temples, which are the border between the consecrated space of the monastery and the profane neighborhood. In its tiered forms, one sees an analogy to Heavenly Jerusalem, and the altar dedicated to St. Nicholas has a protective symbolism in a broad sense. The appearance of the church is similar to defensive structures, such as the towers of the Siberian fortresses and European castles. Several signs allow admitting the similarity of the forms of the church with Ukrainian baroque architecture, Petrine baroque, Gothic architecture of Russia and the Carpathian region. The traditional features of the church include the fulfillment of liturgical requirements – three parts; semantics, including the symbolism of the consecration of the altar, the protective function, the embodiment of the image of Heavenly Jerusalem, an appeal to the historical past; use of well-known materials, designs, and shapes. Traditionality in church architecture is associated with the sacred sphere and basic building techniques, and exclusivity with the visual component of architecture (proportions, metrology, interpretation of forms and structures). It is concluded that the criterion for the traditionality of church architecture is the prevalence of forms, symbols, images of temples in any territory in a certain era due to the preference for choosing combinations of structures and semantics. Exclusivity is provided by the variability of forms, which allows creating an original image system. The very possibility of variations, the use of new and individual techniques, the author’s reading of the building’s features, which fits into the framework of the regulations noted in the sacred books where the boundaries of the canon were not strictly delineated, can be attributed to the important features of the traditionality of Russian Orthodox architecture. The architecture of the Kirensk church combines the features of traditionality and exclusivity; it is a rare example of Orthodox church architecture, its figurative structure was not supported in the further development of Siberian architecture.